[schmuckonwheels]

Common sense would dictate that a military aircraft conducting military operations off the coast of a hostile nation tend to not want to broadcast their position to the world. So not outrageous, just unfortunate. It's extremely common.

[malvim]

I’m sorry, which hostile nation?

[xeornet]

The United States.

[DaSHacka]

The jet was not flying right outside the United States though.

Did you even read the comment thread before responding to GP? You're just spreading misinformation.

[rb666]

His point is that the United States is the country acting in a hostile fashion.

[xeornet]

It’s satire, a hit at global geopolitics where the US is placed as the global police. A joke, if you will.

I read about this incident in detail even before it was posted on HN.

[testbjjl]

What day is it?

[trhway]

On the other side it is perfectly visible on radar (and can be heard (and with jet having its own characteristic signature it can be tracked even by WWII microphone array like they did back then) and visible in binoculars from large distance in nice Caribbean weather), so it is hiding only from civilians. Security by obscurity kind of. That is especially so in the case of a slow large non-maneuvering tanker plane like here.

And why would a tanker plane come close to and even enter the hostile airspace?! may be one has to check Hegseth's Signal to get an answer for that, probably it is something like "big plane -> Scary!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mUbmJ1-sNs.

[appreciatorBus]

The information broadcast by transponder is significantly more precise than what you will get with radar, microphone array, or binoculars.

GPS Lat & Long Barometric Altitude Ground speed & track angle Rate of climb/descent

All updated every second or so.

[phantasmish]

I can just about guarantee it has nothing to do with targeting and a lot to do with making Venezuela unsure when strikes are about to start, both for security of the forces launching the eventual strikes (if any) and to harass/wear-down Venezuelan air defenses by keeping them very alert.

If our aircaft were flying transponders-on during all these exercises then suddenly went dark, it’d signal imminent attack. This keeps them guessing. Possibly we’re even playing around with having them on some of the time for some aircraft, and off at other times.

We don’t do that with AWACS and such near Russia because we’re not posturing that we may attack them any day now, and want to avoid both accidental and “accidental” encounters with Russian weapons by making them very visible. In this case, an accidental engagement by Venezuelan forces probably isn’t something US leadership would be sad about.

[FireBeyond]

I live near JBLM in Washington. I am routinely overflown by helicopters and planes (C-17s) often with their transponders off (I have an ADS-B receiver running on a VM). These are training flights that are not going anywhere outside of the Puget Sound region. For added fun, I'm also pretty close to several Sea-Tac approaches.

[themafia]

> is significantly more precise than what you will get with radar

Is that increase in precision much larger than the plane itself? If it's not then it couldn't possibly matter in this application.

Further radar is not a static image. The radar is constantly sweeping the sky, taking multiple measurements, and in some cases using filtering to avoid noise and jitter.

> GPS Lat & Long Barometric Altitude Ground speed & track angle Rate of climb/descent

You get or synthesize every one of those with radar as well.

[inferiorhuman]

Yes, ADS-B is significantly more precise than civilian primary radar returns. That's why the FAA is trying to move away from radar. The JetBlue near miss was about 150 miles from Curacao ATC which is beyond what most ASR systems cover (around half that).

Military radar is a different beast, but even then you're still trying to figure out what the returns mean. ADS-B explicitly says hey there are two aircraft in a tiny space. Civilian radar is likely not precise enough to identify two aircraft that close.

[rkomorn]

Isn't altitude information also one of the important things about ADS-B that radar lacks?

Although ADS-B is self reported and "vulnerable" to bad/spoofed info.

My CFI and I once saw ADS-B data from one of the startups near Palo Alto airport in California reporting supersonic speeds... at ground level, no less.

Edit: still have it in my email, heh. It was a Kitty Hawk Cora, N306XZ, reporting 933kts at 50'.

[inferiorhuman]

Civilian vs military. The military can get altitude information from primary radar.

[trhway]

Even good stereopair like a WWI navy guns rangefinder, will give you all that info, of course not precise enough to lock a missile - well, transponder also wouldn't let you to anyway, and thus all that transponder precision is pointless in that context.

[baq]

A missile only needs to get close enough for its sensors to take over for the final approach right? Transponder data should be quite enough for that, especially for a kc-46

[trhway]

Any of the methods i mentioned is enough to get missile close, except may be microphones as limited speed of sound means that the plane would have moved significantly from the observed position, though again even that would have allowed to put missile into the vicinity and in general direction.

Watching Ukraine videos there is new game in town though - relatively cheap IR cameras. Using IR, day or night, you can detect a jet plane from very large distances and just guide missile to the plane computer-game-joystick style.

[perlgeek]

If you initiate a military conflict with another nation, the proper thing to do is to declare war first.

[antonymoose]

Even better, we should all wear colorful coats and form a nice big line in an open field before we fight too! There are rules! Are we not gentlemen?

[fakedang]

You jest, but even in the age of modern warfare, countries still actively declare war and formally notify the other country, even if a bit late, with a formal declaration. The notable exceptions being of course the USA and the USSR and Russia, which like to call their wars "police actions" and "special military operations".

[antonymoose]

I would contend that we live in an era of “5th Generation” undeclared wars between powers. I don’t personally draw a line between a missile attack and a shipment of fentanyl or cocaine which will kill citizens all the same.

[paddleon]

the redcoats didn't wear colorful coats and form nice big lines because they were stupid. They beat Napolean using similar tactics. And they didn't lose to the US because of these tactics.

Maybe you should reflect on why people who have lead others in combat have decided that there should be rules to war before you declare that rules of war are a bad idea.

[antonymoose]

The Red Coats lost quite a few battles to their aged tactics against the Patriots. So much so that officers complained about the ungentlemanly conduct routinely in their correspondence.

As far as our modern, temporary notion of “rules of war,” go, it’s because it suited the victor and gives them what they feel is an edge and an air of superiority. I don’t say this to be smug either, just look at how well the Geneva Suggestions worked out for the North Vietnamese or the Taliban. They ignored the and won.

Like it or not, the modern nation-state’s notions of Rules of War are going to quickly become a bygone relic of a simpler time, as was a formal British fighting line.

[the_af]

Ah, yes, the USA is the underdog here, they cannot win at war unless they ignore the conventions of war.

[antonymoose]

Arguably, yes?

Had the US somehow magically lost WWII, the firebombing atrocities would almost certainly have had a few Air Corp generals executed by the victor.

We could just as well look at the systemic atrocities committed against the Vietnamese civilian population and yet we still lost that war.

Excepting the Gulf War, how far back to we go to find something America has won (somewhat) cleanly?

[perlgeek]

Do you also make fun of people who condemn war crimes?